American Agriculture

Food revolution in the US : evolution and issues

Recent research has found important links between poor dietary choices, toxic food environment, processed food and burdens of chronic disease. These findings serve as a propulsion for a food revolution. The Gardner nutrition studies research group, along with a diverse range of collaborators, has been focusing on solution to help find answers to the problems that plague the current food system.

To start with let’s take a look at the food habits of American people to understand how they could improve their way of consumption. First of all, the United States department of agriculture established that Americans should eat between 2.5 and 3 cups of vegetables every day to lead a healthy life. Nevertheless, 87%of Americans adults don’t get enough vegetables. They only eat processing vegetables like potatoes and tomatoes into French fries and tomatoes in pizza. Then, we can observe that US farmers don’t produce enough veggies. But why ? We know that a lot of American would like to eat more veggies but can’t because farmers are not interested in growing vegetables. In fact it is less profitable than crops of cereals or cotton and growing veggies is more expensive than corn or cotton. Moreover, only 45 million of hectares over 125 million are use to produce vegetables and farmers mostly use chemical pesticides and fertilizers in order to grow more on a short period so it will be more profitable. This way of farming is usually called the “traditional farming”. However, fertilizers and chemical products like GMOs are very dangerous for the environment and people’s health. Indeed, they have been linked preliminarily to food allergies,  they increased toxicity and decreased nutritional value. For example, people not only reproach the leader in genetic engineering of food crops, Monsanto, with selling GMOs which are harmful on people’s health but also with controlling farmers. That’s why Monsanto had to pay 289 millions in damages to Dewayne Johnson, a 46 year-old groundskeeper who claimed that Roundup (a pesticide to kill insects and bugs) caused him cancer. So until the development of sustainable farming, American agriculture was, and still sometimes, producing with intensive farming. In order to increase the consumption of vegetables by American people, the government had to find a better way to produce organic veggies and encourage farmers to produce more.

One of the biggest innovation in agriculture is smart farming which is a new way to grow more with less by using electronic tools like smartphones to make irrigation decisions based on the live soil needs. It gives better food and taste by using less water which creates a better work ethics and coast less.

Then, organic farming has also greatly improved in the US. In fact it uses ecologically, based pest controls and biological fertilizers derived largely from animals and plants. This modern organic farming was developed as a response to the environmental harm caused by the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers in conventional agriculture. However, the development of organic farming is becoming but still remain limited because of the time needed to get rid of chemical pesticides. It slows down the agricultural transition of many farms that must wait to get the organic certification. Finally, many stores like Nuggets Market in Los Angeles, recycled food that gets beyond the sell-by date and get it back into the ground to grow the next crop.

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